I Hate Being Naked, But I Want To Love It

In this raw and deeply honest episode, Shanon dives into a thought so many people have but rarely say out loud: “I hate being naked… but I want to love it.”

This conversation goes far beyond body image. It’s about vulnerability, intimacy, nervous system regulation, and the emotional patterns that keep you disconnected from your body.

Shanon shares her personal journey from “boss girl energy” and hyper-independence to softness, embodiment, and true confidence. She explores how discomfort with being naked isn’t just physical.. it’s rooted in emotional blocks, past experiences, and fear of being fully seen.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in your head during intimacy, struggled to feel confident in your body, or craved deeper connection and love, then this episode will open your eyes to what’s really going on beneath the surface.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello, Firefam. Welcome back to another episode of the Fuel the Fire podcast with your host, Shannon Safi. I'm really excited to have you guys here this week. It felt so good getting back on the Mick last week, and I'm really happy to be here again. I just absolutely love podcasting because it's an opportunity to like really get deep and say all the things that my brain thinks about all the time that I don't have the normal space to share it or like the audience to listen. So here I am, just kind of sharing my thoughts out there into the universe and seeing who connects with what I think. And honestly, I do feel that this is a common experience. I think we all have a lot of common thoughts, but no one says them out loud. And I've just tried to get rid of the fear of just like worrying about what people think. Like if I'm thinking it, it wouldn't surprise me if someone else is thinking it. I just know that as unique as we are as individuals, we all have a lot of similar experiences. So we've already, we've all probably thought many of the same things. And just no one says it, no one talks about it. So here we are with today's topic of I hate being naked, but I want to love it. So I've been trying to find like my flow with recording the podcast. What I did today was I took a lap around the neighborhood in this beautiful sun. So thankful that we have some 70-degree weather here in Pennsylvania today, on May 4th, is when I'm recording. And so I did that. And then I laid out in my hammock and caught some more sunshine. And that felt so good. I feel so relaxed after doing something like that. And through that process, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna trust my intuition. I'm gonna trust God. I'm gonna trust spirit guides. I'm gonna just lean into this and trust that they will tell me what it is that they want me to share on this podcast. And I know I sound a little woo-woo, but this is how it's always worked. You know, your creativity is coming from somewhere, right? And I like to choose that, choose to believe that God is working through me in many ways, one of which is how I express myself through my career and through my podcast. So when I was laying there, I tried to really relax myself. And so to get more in tune with my intuition, that's a the first step, really. I did some tapping, some emotional freedom technique. If you're not familiar, I talked about it a little bit on last week's episode, but it's something that I personally practice pretty often, you know, if not daily, most days. I try to do that when I feel any feelings of like discomfort or anxiety coming on, so that I can bring myself back to center. I do it in general too, to just again like release whatever could be holding me back from being in flow with being in tune with the universe to being um just kind of like moving with life instead of trying to work against it, which sometimes, you know, when things feel really hard or when I feel like I'm in a big rush, I have to remind myself, okay, slow down, stop trying so hard, and get back into flow and find kind of like that place in the stream where you can just like coast, right? I tend to just want to make things hard for some reason. This is just my natural human tendency. This might be really common of a human experience, but yeah, just when things start to feel really hard or rushed, slow down, relax, and take the easy street a little bit. There's nothing wrong with that. Like, life does not have to be hard all the time. Life does not always have to be a challenge. It gets to be easy, okay? You get to feel relaxed, you get to be present, you get to be in your body. And so that is what I did. I let myself do that today so that I could show up and be the best version of myself and put out a message that feels very aligned, very true to me, and something that I feel could be really important and hopefully click with someone else. So when I was laying out there on the hammock, when I like silenced my my like little human mind and tried to tap into my intuition, I kind of opened up the question. So I just let it be open-ended and I was like, okay, you know, I have to trust the first thing that comes to my mind or that comes into me, into my brain, really, when I'm laying out there. So I'm like relaxing my nervous system, being open to receive. And the first word, I am like low-key a little embarrassed. I didn't want to put this in the title because I felt like almost uncomfortable, but maybe that's like something that's important to talk about at some point. But the first thing that came up was like sex. And I was like, oh my gosh, like I cannot talk about that on my podcast. Like, there's a zero percent chance, and here I am telling you that's what came into my mind. So I just asked more questions. I was like, okay, let's just meet this with some curiosity. So, why is that important? And how does that even align? And how am I qualified to talk about this? And so, through that, that's where I got closer to the idea of it really being centered around being confident when you're naked. And I feel like that is really, really relevant to my work and so important because that can be a common experience for many people. This is where you start to feel a block. When you're in a space where you don't feel good being naked, it stops you from intimacy. Okay, like it makes intimacy not fun. It can be unenjoyable, it can put you in your head, it takes you out of your body, and you're missing out on something that is a human experience that we should be able to choose and celebrate. And so when you're in the space where uh you're not feeling good naked, uh you're blocking something that you strongly desire, and it's not just about the act of sex, it's about being seen, about being fully seen, which is something that is so so human. Being seen and intimacy aren't necessarily 100% about intercourse, that can be ways to experience intimacy, they can be ways to feel connected, but when it comes to being seen, it's about complete vulnerability, it's about uh just being stripped down to the bare minimum, the core of everything that you are. It's being seen in every element of yourself, good, bad, everything in between. It's about being able to just be fully authentic, to not have to perform, to not have to hide, to not have to worry about anything, to be completely out of your head, to be fully embodied in who you are, and the woman or the man that you want to be. You finally see yourself in the light, in the eyes of source, of creator, of God. It's okay that you have flaws, and you don't even see them as flaws. You look at them as something that's just unique to your character. Because we all have flaws, that's the truth. And you just don't want to have to hide them anymore. It's exhausting. The energy that it takes to hide is depleting, it will drain you of everything that you've got. The longer that you push, trying to hide, trying to not be seen, trying to cover up, you will feel depleted of your life force. This is something that I teach in my body and soul freedom program, which is a 90-day slash three-month experience for people to feel more confident and liberated. So it, you know, this I love. It's the work that I love that's just like a little out there, but I've realized as far as I have gone in my career in supporting people and feeling more confident in their body, it's it's so much more than just a physical thing or like an external thing where it's about appearance. It's taking it to the next level and allowing it to be so embodied that you are just free. There is nothing that can describe the liberating experience that it is to go from someone that's like a high achiever, doing the most, always pushing forward, and then shifting in this space to be able to be present, to flow with life, to feel so confident, to have no shame, to let that all go. That is like the message that I want to put out there. That is the experience that I want to share with people. That's the experience that I took myself through. I think that it's something that especially in this day and age, you know, I was just raised and I was talking to my mom about this yesterday, about like being a strong woman. And for so long, my concept of being a strong woman was like, you know, no one can mess with me, no one can cross me. I don't trust anyone. You have to push, you have to work harder. Everyone's your competition. You have to be the best. You can't slow down, you have to be superwoman, you have to juggle 8,000 things, don't ask for help. You can do it all on your own. You can open your own doors, you can pay your own bills. Like, and that is really beautiful in many ways to be so resilient and so independent. And I prided myself in that. But eventually that became the thing that was blocking me from what I really wanted, which was love. It was so hard for me to feel true, deep love for anyone. You know, like I could say that I loved people, but I didn't feel it the way that I feel it now. It's so, so different. And I don't know if I consciously recognized that for a while, like it took me some time to realize that I was actually blocking myself from love. It was this like weird pattern that I noticed that anytime, like there's two ways that I kind of noticed it. One was like kind of more in the tone of like happiness, where things would be like going really well, and it would make me uncomfortable to the point where it would overwhelm me, and then I would start to have really like crazy anxiety. And that sounds so silly, but that it was like my own fear of things being too good. It was like, when's the other shoe gonna drop? Life can't be this good, life can't feel this in flow, and then I would tap into this anxiety and be so scared, like something bad's gonna happen. You know, like I can't relax, I'm overwhelmed, my nervous system is a wreck. And I realized that was a big pattern that I had to work on healing around allowing things to flow, allowing things to feel good, allowing myself to truly feel joy and love. Like it would happen in those moments when I felt really connected to my partner. Or, you know, when I was just like having this intense laugh and pleasurable moment with someone, with a good friend, though that's when it would hit me when I would almost be like so overwhelmed with these good feelings that I didn't know what to do with them. And I almost felt like I didn't deserve them subconsciously. Um and when it comes to love, love, that was something that I struggled with for a long time. And so, again, this brings us back into the topic. But yeah, I really wanted to be in love. I wanted to like feel authentic, true, unconditional love with another human. I wanted someone to be like, to just be able to see me completely and say, I still love you no matter what. And no matter what, nothing will ever change. I will always love you, and you can be messy and you can be loud and you can show me any emotions and you can struggle, and that will change nothing. That's really what I craved. But because I was stuck in my boss girl energy for so long, I blocked myself from it. I struggled to let people in. I like wouldn't let people do things for me. Like people would offer to like guys would offer to do things for me, and I just like would say no and I would reject it. I'm like, I can do it myself. I don't need that, I'm not gonna ask for help. And it's like really hard to feel connected and close to someone when they keep you at arm's length. And again, I was unconsciously doing this. I didn't even recognize this pattern in myself, but once I saw it, I was like, wow, I need to fix this. And it's easier said than done. I didn't just snap my fingers and make the change. You start to notice this thing, the things that you can shift, and then you have to regulate your nervous system in the times when you start to choose different patterns. That is the part that most people miss, and that's what I teach in Body and Soul freedom. I teach you how to actually hold the energy of these changes, how to work through the discomfort that comes up when you're choosing a different pattern. Okay. And so when you are moving through it and starting to recognize that one of your deepest desires, and this is going to be true for most people, if not everyone, right? And it's okay if it scares you, but to be vulnerable, to show someone your cracks, your wounds, all of the pain that you felt, to open up to that, to let yourself feel it too. That is the way that you get comfortable with intimacy. There are many ways that you can approach this experience of loving being naked. You know, and this might feel really backwards because most people would be like, okay, well, I don't like being naked because I don't like my body. And so if I need to fix my body, that means I'm gonna eat and work out in a certain way. And these are definitely things that are important to show your body love, but it is not solely the pathway to getting into a space of loving your body and having no shame attached to being completely bare and completely seen. Our physical reality is nothing more than an internal, or maybe I'm saying this backwards. So our internal experience is expressed through our external reality. So when we have a block around intimacy and vulnerability in the sense of like sharing our deepest thoughts, sharing our darkest secrets, when we struggle with that, it will equate to discomfort of being naked. Or, you know, there can be ways or people that might overexpose or overshare in a way that doesn't feel comfortable, and that still comes back to discomfort with intimacy, if that makes sense. Like, I'm trying, like, uh for lack of a better example, like if someone was a stripper, I don't, you know, I'm not thinking of great examples, but this is probably the most one top of mind. Like, people could say, like, oh, this person is a stripper. They are naked in front of people, they're so comfort confident and comfortable and they love being naked, but at the same time, they could be having an internal experience where they don't love being naked. And it could come back to a discomfort of really being seen for who they are instead of just a human body, right? Like there are deeper layers. So, all this to say that when it comes to wanting to feel fully embodied, to feel really good about the way you look, about how you are, and to really love that deeply, it comes through personal exploration and understanding yourself. There are a lot of tools out there to know yourself on a deeper level. So you can do things like human design, you can check out astrology, you can take personality tests. These are all helpful because you really have to get to know yourself. And sometimes, like even if you don't fully agree with everything that you read about yourself, or you don't know your exact birth time to determine more details about yourself, because you know, for example, astrology, there's so much more depth to it than just like what your sun sign is, which is kind of like what many of us go by, but there's a lot of different facets to it. And again, even if you don't agree with every element, it is such a goal, a good tool for self-exploration for you to look at that and be like, okay, is that true? Is that just inherent? And it helped me with a lot of things of feeling like, you know, moments where I'd be like, why am I this way? This is so annoying. I want to change this about myself. I keep doing this thing. And in reality, it's just like once I realized that I didn't have to fight myself and just be like, okay, maybe this is just true about me and I don't want to keep resisting it, it helped me just accept it as silly as it sounds. Like, I'll try to think of a good example. Um, you know, we'll just use this because I think it's an easy one for most people to identify with, like being a Libra. Um something that's really common with Libras is being indecisive. And so rather than just me getting frustrated with my indecision, I embraced it and it almost helped me get better at it, as silly as it sounds. It became a thing that could be playful instead of putting pressure on it. It became, okay, well, if this is something that I can commonly default into, what are ways that I can support myself to have more clarity and to have more trust in my intuition and to be more decisive and to know what I really want and to understand my true desires? Another example could be if you are a human design person. Again, I love human design. So there's five different major architect archetypes, and one of them is a projector, which is what I am. And so, projectors, one of the things that they love to do is to speak, but um, it's like literally in the name. But one of the things about it is if you try to share your message with the wrong people or you weren't invited to share your message, you can feel really hurt and really rejected. And so I used to think like, dang, why am I so soft? Like, why am I getting my feelings hurt so easily? Like, why does it feel like no one cares about what I have to say? And this is something that was like really deep in me because I would have and still have like dreams about my family like not caring about my feelings or like what I have to share. And so part of that was once I realized, oh, okay, like as a projector, part of it is waiting for an invitation. And so then I started to realize, like, okay, I just want to choose to be around people in spaces where my voice is welcomed, where people ask me about me. Because for quite some time, like I was in dynamics with friends. Um, there's like one or two that I can specifically think of where it was, you know, one-sided for a lack of a better way to put it. And through that experience, you know, I felt like this person didn't deeply care about me. It was more like what I could do for them. And because I was such a people pleaser, our dynamic worked really well because I just wanted to do everything to make this person happy. And I lost myself in it. But at the same time, it was a convenient way for me to not have to be vulnerable because they never turned the questions back and said, Well, what how do you feel or what do you think? So it did serve me, right? So even through these challenging relationship dynamics that we face, they are still serving us in some way. And so I still chose this, you know, where it's nothing that I'd be like, you should feel bad for me. No, I chose it, right? It was doing something for me. It made me feel needed. And especially if you're a mom, I hear this very often with my mom clients, like my clients who are moms, um, that. They're very focused on giving and giving to everyone else. And some days you're just like, Wow, I wish someone would give to me. But at the same time, they're blocking themselves from letting people give to them. Right? There's there is something that, even though you can consciously say, I don't want this, there is a part of you unconsciously that feels really good being needed, being desired so strongly, feeling like you're the one that drives the ship, feeling that this house needs you, otherwise, it would fall apart. There's a part of your ego that loves that, and that's okay. Okay. It's totally okay. You have to recognize that you would never choose something, even if it sucked, you would never choose it if there wasn't a part of yourself that wanted it. And that is just the truth. So this is an important piece because once you recognize that and you put yourself in the driver's seat, you are now in an empowered position to make a change. When you put yourself at cause and say, I'm choosing this, then you can choose differently. Once you realize all the reasons that you have chosen it, you can find different ways to get those needs met. Okay. And so coming back to this reflection tool, I know I diverted because I love to do that. So coming back to this tool of reflection of human design, again, it was an opportunity for me to say, okay, some of these things are just inherent desires of how I'm wired, and there's nothing wrong with me wanting to be on a podcast. There's nothing wrong with me wanting to have my voice heard. There's nothing wrong with me for waiting for an invitation, right? To be encouraged to speak, to be encouraged to step up, to have opportunities come to me in ways that are more of a magnetization versus a go and go and go and get after it type of thing. So this kind of taught me like, okay, I need to be more in flow with life, especially around this principle of waiting for the invitation, which is something that's really big for projectors. It made me realize, oh, so when I push and try to do too much for my business, it's because I'm not working with my natural flow as a human. Like I'm going against my personal design as a person. And that's why it doesn't feel good. So it's like I would listen to these podcasts that were always about, like, you know, if you don't do the work, you don't get it. And like that was my mindset. So now I'm trying to unlearn all of that because I realized life works so much better for me when I'm in flow, when I'm allowing things to come to me, when opportunities are presented. And if I didn't know myself, if I didn't take the time to really understand who I am, I wouldn't get that. And the reason this is so important is because for as long as we are fighting ourselves or working against our natural flow of who we are meant to be and how we are meant to show up, we're going to have some degree of discomfort or unhappiness or unlack of fulfillment in our life. And so when we are feeling dull, a lack of creativity, feeling completely disengaged from our present moment, we're going to start to experience physical symptoms of this. All of these things tend to add up to that discomfort that we feel in our body, which leads to that discomfort of being naked, which leads to our block of being intimate with our partners. And that is one of the ways we are meant to express ourselves, to experience pleasure, to experience joy. You get to have that sexual energy buildup. You need to have that. Every person needs to experience that. And when we're detached from it from a for a long time, it can definitely drain our energy. We are inherently sexual beings. And it's, it can feel super uncomfortable to say for me. I feel a little weird saying it, but at the same time, I know that I have to say this. I know I have to share this because it's important. We detach from it. And it's something that we learn and feel is so wrong and taboo for talking about. And so we end up getting stuck with this feeling and no solution because we don't want to talk about it because it's uncomfortable. It's weird, right? It's like maybe there are a select few friends that we feel comfortable talking about it with. And it's something that you get to do, it's something that you get to give yourself permission to do. It's something that you get to explore. So, for example, if you notice that you're having a tough time enjoying intimacy, say your partner wants to initiate and you're not feeling good about your body, you're really in your head, you're thinking, how do I look in this position? Like, I, you know, I want the lights to be off. I don't feel comfortable. And like you're thinking about your to-do list, and then you randomly think about your dog, and your brain is, and you're like, no, come back, come back. But your your brain is everywhere. Okay. What's happening is you're in your head and you need to be in your body. So it can feel uncomfortable being in your body, especially when you're not feeling happy in it. But starting to break through that and ask yourself, well, how can I feel comfortable being in my body? That's a great place to start. And there's many different things that you can do to put yourself back into your body and to start to feel comfortable being in it. You get to feel comfortable being in your body regardless of what it looks like. It's not a physical thing. Like it's it's not about how you look that determines that. It's about you creating safety to be in it. And so that work goes much deeper than just that moment of intimacy. But I want to touch on that for a second. In that moment of intimacy, again, as women, like we have to be in our body to enjoy sex. And so things that you can do can be gentle touch, it can be massage, it can be, you know, things that you do that give you a sensory experience that take you out of your head. It can be deep breath, it can be co-regulation with your partner through breath work. It can be many different things, but this is an important step because when you're in that vulnerable position, when you are naked, there is dysregulation happening. And so if you want to love it, you have to learn how to regulate in that moment. And again, I know I keep talking about it, but this is what I talk about in body and soul freedom. If you're really curious on how to actually start to regulate your body, I highly encourage you to check it out. Because this is something that no other nutrition program that I've ever known teaches. But it's something that is so important because even if, again, you try to manipulate your food and what you're eating, if you're not creating safety in the body when you're it when you're naked and regulating through the discomfort that's coming up, you're gonna be stuck in the same cycle for a long time. Um and so when it comes to the work around doing it, so outside of intimacy, it's important to clear trauma. This is gonna help you enjoy being naked and enjoy intimacy much more. Many people will say, Well, I have no trauma. And, you know, uh, there's there's an author, Gabby Bernstein, who I really love. She talks about little T trauma and capital T trauma. So it's it's normal that you haven't had capital T trauma, which is like the big scary things that most people think about when I say the word trauma. Little T trauma, we all experience it. Literally, like being born and being removed from your mother's womb is like little tea trauma. I mean, some would say big T trauma. That's a big argument, I guess. So that's just an example. But like you not getting what you want, little tea trauma. Your mom not paying attention to you, little tea trauma. You feeling like your parents didn't show up to your sporting events, little tea trauma. You know, your siblings bullying you, little tea trauma. So these are still traumas. These are little things. Like, and I'm sure as I said them, you can probably like little things might go off in your head of like, dang yeah, dang yeah, that thing happened, this thing happened, I carry this with me. That happened when I was eight years old. Why do I still think about that? These are the little things that we have to clear out that get in the way, that get stuck in our brain, that get stuck in our body. These emotional memories get stored within us. And if we don't do things to clear them out, if we don't do the things to look at them and release the emotion tied to it, we carry it around. And it makes it harder for us to lose weight if that's a goal. It makes it harder to feel confident in our body. Because our body is our vessel for this human experience that we're living right now. So if we don't take care of it emotionally, mentally, spiritually, it's not going to give to us what it's designed to do fully. We can't fully enjoy or experience what it's designed to do for us. Because your body is always trying to heal itself. It's always trying to do better, it's always trying to protect you. And so once you start to realize that there are some protective mechanisms that it is running, like suppression as an example, suppressing memories or holding down emotions, it is trying to protect you because that way, if you don't think about it, you don't feel the pain. But the other side of that is you have to face that pain and release it and process it for you to let go of it and to be able to move forward. It's kind of like collecting a bunch of pebbles. So if you just keep collecting pebbles, it's like, okay, sure, it's like one little tea trauma, one small pebble. But we collect pebbles for our entire lives. And so if we don't learn to put them down, learn how to let go of them, we feel heavy. And then we can fear physically experience the feeling of feeling heavy. And so through that, that's again where oftentimes clients meet me when they have that feeling of like, okay, I'm feeling discomfort in my body. How do I move into a different place and start to love my body again, to start to honor and nourish my body in a way, to not feel blocked or guilty or feel ashamed of my choices? How do I get to move my body again in a way that feels exciting where I don't feel embarrassed? These are all normal things that come up. And again, like a lot of women experience this and we just don't talk about it, or we've normalized it and laugh about it with our friends when deep down it does really hurt us. And so that's where I'm gonna leave this podcast. I'm gonna wind it down because I'm already checking out the clock on the timer, and I'm really working on getting my episodes to be a little bit more streamlined. Um, but at the same time, I want to keep them somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes for the most part, even though I'm sure you'll get some longer episodes, especially if we have guests. It's so hard to keep them short. But anyway, if you hate being naked and you want to love it, I hope that you take in some of what I shared with you today. So really focusing on number one, being in your body, number two, regulating yourself when discomfort comes up. Number three, finding what blocks are there keeping you from moving your body in the way that you want to and eating in the way that you want to. Um, and so those are three great things to really focus on to start moving into a space of being comfortable, you know, practicing different ways of being vulnerable, whether it is through intimacy or it's uh through an emotional expression or creative expression, showing someone that something that feels a little uncomfortable or sharing something that feels a little uncomfortable, but it's true, it's true to you. Understanding yourself and what you want. Okay, these are all the things to touch on and to tap into to really explore and see which one feels the most alive for you right now in this moment, and start there. You know, there's no exact order of which you need to do these things, they can all be simultaneously happening at different times, in different ways, at different speeds. You have to honor and trust the flow of your intuition. Um, trust the first thing that comes into your brain. Don't try to ride it out with logic and overthink and change your mind. Just flow with the first thing that caught your attention, even if it doesn't feel like the most logical thing. It's true to you. Okay. All right. Well, I hope you love this episode. If you've been enjoying the podcast, especially on this comeback that I've been making with the podcast, I would greatly appreciate you writing a review. And if you send me a screenshot, I'll send you a little virtual gift as a thank you for reviewing the podcast. And share this episode with someone that you feel like could use it. I mean, many ladies out there, we have this thought. Many men also have this thought. So share it with someone that could use it, someone that you think could really grow from it, someone that you would love to see happy and confident. Um, and so yeah, I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'll be back next week.